[project86]

Does anyone know if this feature is available on the Storm? I can plug in my Mp3 player through my trucks stereo and play tunes but I notice I cannot do that with the Storm. My brother-in-law can hook up his iPhoney to his stereo and play Slacker or Pandora and I am jealous.

[mud.pony]

I have used an FM transmitter to play pandora throuh my stereo and had no trouble. Great sound. But I dont know about the way you plug it in.

[project86]

I just use a mp3 plug through the headphone jack on the phone but it doesn't work like that. Any FM transmitter will do? Like Belkin?

[matrix2004]

Headphone jacks are old school. Bluetooth/FM transmitters are the way to go. Try the Motorola T505, that's what i use.

[project86]

Is that a bluetooth headset? I have one of those, I am just wondering how to listen to Slacker and Pandora through my truck stereo.

[matrix2004]

Originally Posted by project86

Is that a bluetooth headset? I have one of those, I am just wondering how to listen to Slacker and Pandora through my truck stereo.

No. The Motorola T505 is not a bluetooth headset. Its a device that connects to your phone via bluetooth and it has an FM transmitter to listen to music and make/take calls through your car speakers.

[Josh O]

I think I'm going to give Pandora a try. My head unit in my truck has Bluetooth audio capability and if that doesn't work, I can go old school with the headphone out and an aux cable.

[dave1812dave]

Originally Posted by matrix2004

Headphone jacks are old school. Bluetooth/FM transmitters are the way to go. Try the Motorola T505, that's what i use.

disagree. BT sound quality isn't as good as a wired connection to a good car stereo. If your car stereo is subpar, you might not mind using BT.

Then again, the low fidelity as compared to say, a wifi connection to Pandora, would likely not be impaired enough to notice, by sending it via BT to your car stereo. I was sorely dissapointed in Pandora on the Storm, so I fired off an email to them. Their response was that Pandora on the Storm utilizes a "low bandwidth solution". Not very pleasant to my ears.

[djxedxd]

Um realy ? If your mp3 player worked theres no reason your Storm shouldn't .When you hook it to your truck stereo hit Options And Make It Go Thru Headset. Should have no prob .

[rta53]

This was one of the first things I tried when I got my Storm. Slacker plays just fine through my car stereo.

[Josh O]

I'm noticing that Pandora through my Storm sounds so much more compressed than my iPod. I think maybe I'll try Slacker to hear the sound quality differences.

[project86]

Thanks for the information y'all. I will definitely check out that Motorolla device.

[jmwking]

Originally Posted by Josh O

I'm noticing that Pandora through my Storm sounds so much more compressed than my iPod. I think maybe I'll try Slacker to hear the sound quality differences.

This may be obvious, but every step in the process of encoding, decoding, and transmitting can degrade the sound quality. All other steps being equal, when riding in a car I see two main differences between itunes on an ipod and pandora on a blackberry:

A Pandora Radio stream is more compressed than a track downloaded from iTunes onto an iPod (or even a Pandora stream over wifi/wired internet), so some quality will be lost there. I think Pandora Radio adjusts the stream for signal strength, too, so if you're in a weak (non-3G) area, you'll get an even more compressed stream.

I don't know about their respective playback circuitry, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that an ipod has better audio hardware than a blackberry.

-jk

[rta53]

I have never been able to get stereo sound using Pandora and I have tried it on a Curve and a Storm. Slacker has always been in stereo. Does Pandora only broadcast in mono?

[Josh O]

I tried Slacker on my Storm through my stereo system and the sound quality was closer to my iPod (tracks ripped anywhere between 128-192k, can't say if it competes with Apple Lossless format), much better than Pandora through the Storm. I think this is kind of the exact opposite of what I read at Crackberry, I thought the review comparison gave the sonic quality edge to Pandora but to my ears, Slacker has it beat. Anyways, Slacker seems to be pretty cool, I highly doubt I'll pop for the $3.99 month for the upgraded version, I can live with only being able to skip six tracks every hour, paying a monthly fee defeats the purpose for my use.

On sound quality via bluetooth vs. old school hardwire, just to re-enforce what was said above, pretty big losses in fidelity when going the bluetooth route as I tried it both ways last night i n my truck, hardwire via the headphone jack for me most definitely.

[blackberryfront]

Hard wired sounds better if you have an AUX jack. Slacker sounds better through my audio system but I use Pandora because I like it better.

[rta53]

Are you getting stereo sound? To me that is a deal breaker as far as Pandora is concerned. Maybe it's not a big deal to some.

[blackberryfront]

Originally Posted by rta53

Are you getting stereo sound? To me that is a deal breaker as far as Pandora is concerned. Maybe it's not a big deal to some.

Not sure if it is true stereo sound, doesn't seem as loud as Slacker but connected to my Bose portable speaker it sounds fine. Just in my car plugged into the Aux jack it doesn't sound as good as my MP3's or Slacker with the same connection. I still use Pandora because I like the interface and music better.

[user242]

I listen to both Slacker and Pandora in my truck. No problems with either of them. Sound quality from both is about the same from my experience. My truck is a 2002 with a cassette player so I used the tape headphone adapter and it works well.

Although I personally preffer Slacker because I like the preset music categories and the comedy station that Pandora doesn't have. The latest version of Slacker also allows much faster skips from song to song although just 6 skips are allowed with their free version but sound quality is still great! I listen to Slacker pretty much all day from the office to my drive home!

[Josh O]

I'm hooked on Slacker, I really dig it. Great supplement to the 25GB worth of music on my iPod.